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Junior Member
 
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Last Login: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:45 PM
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I'm having communication troubles reading sensor data and controlling some servos connected to my Serializer board. I'm communicating with the Serializer via Xbee boards and I think I have them set up correctly because I can send commands to the Serialzer through Putty and read firmware version, ect, but for some reason when I run one of those sample programs on the download page, it doesn't seem to take any commands.
I can read sensor data from Putty but sending commands to the servos doesn't do anything. I'm using 2 Parallax (Futaba) Continuous Rotation Servo if that helps. I noticed when trying to run the sample applications that in the output window whenever a command is sent to the Serialier, like querying the sensors, it always times out.
I thought that power might be an issue so I connected the board with a constant 12V power supply.
I used the Xbee connection guide found on the forums and the buad rate should be correct. I had an issue before where the baud rate wasn't the same for both of the modules but I corrected that.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Supreme Being
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Junior Member
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Well the drivers on that page are really old so they wont work on my setup. I've tried using the VCP drivers from http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm on a computer with Windows 7 64-bit installed and another system with Windows XP 32-bit installed. I had to modify the drivers for Windows to recognize the USB module because the vendor information changed since the older version of the driver like the one in your link.
It's weird that I can send commands successfully through putty (except for the servos for some reason) but not in any .NET application using the Serializer lib. Like I said in the OP, the output window in Visual Studio shows all the commands, fw, reset, sensor, etc, timing out so there's no communication between the computer and the Serializer.
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Supreme Being
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Hi Engg, sorry, I missed your name before.
One thing that comes to mind is that Putty is a very slow
communication versus the Pump.Events in c#. The data LED's
on my USB2XBee board are blinking at almost steady on.
Could be a data overrun? But then, all Serializer functions
should work with Putty as well.
Well, aren't I just a wealth of information tonight... Sorry, I
dunno. Hopefully some wisdom will chime in and get you some
answers.
Don Lewis
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Junior Member
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| Thanks for the response. Hmm I don't know it might be a data overrun but you'd think I would get at least some values from my sensors when running that sample app but I don't get any readings back. I'll guess I'll send an email to the support team but if anyone else has any ideas I would appreciate it.
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Supreme Being
Group: Administrators
Last Login: Monday, October 31, 2011 9:18 PM
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| Are you choosing the right COM port in the drop down list in the sample apps before connecting? You don't have PuTTY opening the COM port at the same time that you're attempting to run the demo apps are you? Don, you're now a 'Supreme Being'!!!  Best Regards,
Jason Summerour
President,
Summerour Robotics Corporation
www.roboticsconnection.com
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Junior Member
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| Yeah I have the right COM port selected and I make sure Putty isn't running when trying the sample programs. I've even tried connecting to each available COM port just to make sure.
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Junior Member
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I still haven't been able to figure this com's issue out. Unfortunately I am running out of time as this is for my 4th year EE project.
IF anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated!  otherwise... I don't even know what I am going to do.
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Junior Member
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Oh, and the only thing that seems to be different then other Xbee projects is that I am using this development board:
Perhaps this has something to do with the com problem?
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Junior Member
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OK, I think I found out what the problem is. When I have Xbee chips connected one way (one on the serializer and one on the usb module in my previous post) then I can send commands through putty successfully (except for servos but this might be related to the problem) but not in a .NET app. I tried swapping the Xbees to double check the baud rate was correct. When I tried putty again I wasn't able to send commands at all. If I pressed the reset button on the serializer a message appears in my terminal window with the firmware version and whatnot.
So when I noticed that I couldn't send commands anymore through putty I though it was a VCP driver error because I was playing around with different drivers. At the time (this was a few days ago when I was playing around with this) I forgot that I swapped the Xbee modules around. Today I tried swapping them back and verified that I can only send commands through putty when the Xbees are connected a certain way.
This leads me to believe that one of the modules is broken but it doesn't exactly explain why I can send commands with the Xbees connected one way but not the other. You'd think that if one of the modules is broken than there should not be any communication period.
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